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Urgyen Sangharakshita
NONFICTION
RELIGION
NA541612D
The Buddha’s
Noble Eightfold Path
An Introduction
Read by Kulananda
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Chapter 1 The Nature of Existence : Perfect Vision
Perfect Vision
The Path of Vision and the Path of Transformation
The Nature of Existence
The Wheel of Life
The Buddha
The Path
The Four Noble Truths
The Three Characteristics of Conditioned Existence
1. Conditioned Existence is Suffering
2. Conditioned Existence is Impermanent
3. Conditioned Existence is Devoid of True Selfhood
Karma and Rebirth
The Four Sunyatas
1. Samskrta Sunyata – The Emptiness of the Conditioned
2. Asamskrta Sunyata – The Emptiness of the Unconditioned
3. Maha Sunyata – The Great Emptiness
4. Sunyata Sunyata – The Emptiness of Emptiness
Chapter 2 Reason and Emotion in the Spiritual Life
Samyak-samkalpa – Perfect Emotion
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The negative aspect of Perfect Emotion
Naiskramya, or ‘non-desire’
Avyapada or ‘non-hate’
Avihimsa or ‘non-cruelty’
The positive aspect of Perfect Emotion
Dana, or giving
Maitri, or love
Karuna, or compassion
‘In the Mahayana form of Buddhism, that is to say...’
Mudita, or Sympathetic Joy
Upeksa, or tranquillity
Sraddha, or faith and devotion
The Sevenfold Puja
‘The first stage of the Sevenfold Puja is puja, or worship.’
The second stage of the Sevenfold Puja is vandana...’
The third stage of the Sevenfold Puja is Going for Refuge...’
The Going for Refuge section of the Sevenfold Puja is followed...
The fifth stage of the Sevenfold Puja is Rejoicing in Merits.’
The sixth stage, Entreaty and Supplication...’
The seventh and last stage of the Sevenfold Puja is Transference...’
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Chapter 3 The Ideal of Human Communication – Perfect Speech
‘Now we come to the third aspect of the Buddha’s...’
‘There are three great phases in the historical development...’
The four levels of Perfect Speech
1. The level of truthfulness
‘But then another question arises: do we really even know...’
2. The level of affectionateness
3. The level of helpfulness
4. The level of promoting concord, harmony, and unity
‘In this connection one may think of the examples...
Chapter 4 The Principles of Ethics – Perfect Action
The ‘decline of morals’
Judaeo-Christian ethics
The Buddhist criterion
Patterns of ethical behaviour
The Five Silas and the Five Dharmas
‘The first of the Five Precepts is abstention from harming...’
‘The second of the Five Precepts is abstention from taking...’
‘The third Precept is abstention from sexual misconduct.’
‘The fourth Precept is abstention from false speech.’
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‘The last of the Five Precepts is abstention from drink...’
The Bhikkshu Samvarasila and Bodhisattva Samvarasila
Total action
Chapter 5 The Ideal Society – Perfect Livelihood
‘Buddhism too has its day-dreams.’
‘Our collective existence has three principal aspects...’
‘Buddhism has various social teachings...’
‘In the same way we find that in the political sphere...’
‘The third aspect of our collective existence...’
‘Having understood some of the main reasons for its inclusion...’
Buddhists in the West have begun to realise...’
Occupation
Vocation
Duration
Chapter 6 The Conscious Evolution of Man – Perfect Effort
The Four Exertions
1. Preventing the arising of unarisen, unskilful mental states
2. Eradicating arisen, unskilful mental states
(a) The hindrance of craving for material things
(b) The hindrance of hatred
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(c) The hindrance of restlessness and anxiety
(d) The hindrance of sloth and torpor
(e) The hindrance of doubt and indecision
‘In Buddhism the mind or consciousness is often compared...’
‘But how is one to cleanse and purify the water?’
‘The first method consists in considering the consequences...’
‘The second method consists in cultivating the opposite.’
‘The third method is to allow the unskilful thoughts...’
‘If these three methods do not succeed there is a fourth...’
3. Developing unarisen skilful mental states
‘Progress in meditation – progress in the attainment...’
‘The simile for the first dhyana or higher meditative state...’
‘As the simile of the second dhyana the Buddha asks us...’
‘Waxing even more poetical, as the simile for the third dhyana.’
‘The Buddhist simile for the fourth dhyana is that of...’
4. Maintaining arisen, skilful mental states
The Background of Perfect Effort
Perfect Effort as conscious evolution
Chapter 7 Levels of Awareness – Perfect Awareness
Levels of Awareness
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1. Awareness of things
2. Awareness of oneself
(a) Awareness of the body and its movements
(b) Awareness of feelings
(c) Awareness of thought
3. Awareness of people
4. Awareness of reality
Chapter 8 The Higher Consciousness – Perfect Samadhi
Samatha, Samapatti, and Samadhi
Samatha
Samapatti
Samadhi
1. The Imageless Samadhi
2. The Directionless Samadhi
3. The Samadhi of the Voidness
The Noble Eightfold Path as a Cumulative Process
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Total time: 5:34:41
© Vision and Transformation – an introduction to The Buddha’s Noble
Eightfold Path by Urgyen Sangharakshita
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The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path
An Introduction
Written by Urgyen Sangharakshita
Sitting under a tree one full moon night on the
hot and dusty plains of Northern India at the
height of the dry season, two and a half
thousand years ago, a man called Siddhartha
Gautama made a huge spiritual effort.
Summoning up his prodigious powers of
concentration, developed through years of
ascetic practice, he turned inwards, seeking to
uproot whatever it was in his human nature
that stood between him and the experience of
complete freedom that for all of those years
had been his goal.
Coursing ever further into the depths of his
own mind, courageously confronting, one after
another, his own inner demons, recognising
and overcoming them, Siddhartha finally
achieved that goal. In the last watch of the
night he attained complete liberation. Having
taken his seat as an ordinary human being,
Siddhartha arose at dawn as a Buddha – one
who is Awake. He had ‘woken up’ to the true
nature of existence and was irreversibly freed
from all the limitations previously imposed on
him by the inner forces of craving, aversion and
delusion.
The Buddha devoted the rest of his life to
teaching others how they too might follow his
path and arrive at that same goal. Adapting his
teaching to the needs and circumstances of
those he encountered, he travelled the length
and breadth of Northern India and, tradition
tells us, what he often taught is what we now
know in English as the Noble Eightfold Path.
From that time onwards, wherever Buddhism
took root – in India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan,
Tibet or the countries of South East Asia – the
Noble Eightfold Path continued to be taught
and practised.
The Eightfold Path starts by addressing the
issue of our views – the ideas, beliefs and
opinions we hold about the world, ourselves
and others. Depending on these we turn
towards the world with various feelings,
intentions and aspirations, and so we speak, act
and make our way in the world.
According to the Buddha, if you want to be
free you need first of all to address these
matters: your views, your feelings and
intentions, your speech, your actions and how
you make you way in the world. These cover
the first five stages of the Path. You should also
make a conscious effort to grow and develop,
to cultivate your awareness and to develop your
skills in meditation: the last three stages of the
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enough. We have to approach it not just from
the head but also from the heart – even the
belly. The responses he evokes are therefore
heartfelt and visceral. He pulls off the truly
unusual feat of being simultaneously scholarly
and vivid; deeply traditional and yet bang up to
the minute.
As it developed, the Buddhist tradition
schematised its doctrines in an endless variety
of lists. Lists upon lists, and lists within lists, and
Sangharakshita doesn’t shy from this approach.
In fact, he embraces it. So here we have not
only the Eightfold Path, but also the Four Noble
Truths, the Three Characteristics of Conditioned
Existence, the Four Shunyatas, the Four
‘Sublime Abodes’, the Five Shilas, the Five
Dharmas and so on and on. Far from being a
dry catalogue, however, each of these lists is
brought skilfully to life and their application to
our contemporary situation is drawn out with
wit, charm, and penetrating metaphor.
But what shines out of this commentary,
sometimes quite startlingly for me, and what
makes it so valuable, is Sangharakshita’s own
deep personal commitment to live out the
implications of these doctrines to the full. As he
ranges across the Eightfold Path, commenting
from the breadth of his knowledge of the
Buddhist tradition and his panoramic grasp of
Western intellectual, artistic and cultural
traditions, it is this wholehearted – and deeply
challenging – personal commitment that speaks
to me again and again. Just as the archaic torso
of Apollo confronted the poet Rilke with the
Path. And if that sounds really easy, I’ve not
made my point, for the Eightfold Path is a
training in the complete, unqualified,
reorientation of our deeply intransigent being.
In The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path,
Sangharakshita presents a commentary for our
time. When it appeared in print, the original
title was Vision and Transformation and this
describes, in essence, his approach. He
demonstrates that the Eightfold Path is not a list
to be studied, but a path to be followed. An
Englishman by birth, Sangharakshita’s personal
practice of the path and his years of teaching in
both the East and the West has enabled him to
return to the original Pali sources and
reconsider the Eightfold Path in contemporary
terms. Rooted in the tradition by his years of
training in the East, Sangharakshita nonetheless
brings to the tradition a very modern and
practical view of the Path, informed by
elements of Western psychology, art, religion
and culture.
Right at the start, he takes a new look at
the translations used to describe each stage of
the Path. Instead of Right View, as the first
stage is often translated, he suggests Perfect
Vision. Instead of Right Intention, he suggests
Perfect Emotion. This fresh, radical approach to
these teachings brings them alive, making them
more immediately relevant to our contemporary
situation.
Again and again, Sangharakshita reminds
us that a merely conceptual understanding of
the Path, valuable though it may be, is not
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flatly imperative demand: ‘You must change
your life’, so Sangharakshita’s commentary,
imbued throughout with his own deep
existential engagement with the topic, calls
upon us too to make a voyage of personal
change and discovery.
There is nothing merely theoretical here.
Every word is an invitation to change, an
invitation to each of us, in our own way, to
begin to live out the fullness of our particular
potential. Sangharakshita’s espousal of
Buddhism for everyone – not just for monastics
or other ‘spiritual professionals’ – has a
particular resonance in the West today. In The
Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path he amply
demonstrates that this broad, all-inclusive
approach need never compromise the
fundamental Buddhist challenge to make every
moment an opportunity for personal spiritual
transformation. And that, in the end, is the very
essence of the Path.
Notes by Kulananda
Sangharakshita is a unique figure in the Buddhist world. After the Second
World War, he spent 20 years in India, most of them as a monk in the
Theravada tradition but practising and studying with teachers from a range
of Buddhist traditions. This has led him to write on all the major aspects of
the Buddhist tradition, drawing inspiration from them in the light of both
contemporary scholarship and his own spiritual life. In doing so, he has
discerned the core teachings that underlie the tradition as a whole, and
seeks to re-express these in ways that are relevant, coherent, and spiritually
vital. He has now been teaching Buddhism for over 50 years through
lectures, writing, and recordings. This broader perspective is also an
underlying aspect of the Western Buddhist Order, the worldwide Buddhist
movement he founded on his return to the UK in the late 1960s.
Cover picture courtesy AKG Images
10
The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path
An Introduction
Read by Kulananda
The Eightfold Path is the most widely known formulation of the Buddha’s
teaching. It is ancient, reaching back to the Buddha’s very first discourse,
and it is highly venerated as a unique treasury of wisdom and practical guidance.
The teaching of the Eightfold Path challenges us to grasp the implications of that
vision, and asks us to transform ourselves in its light. Like the teaching itself,
this work covers every aspect of life.
978-962-634-416-3
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Made in Germany.
Kulananda. A leading member of the Western Buddhist Order,
which he joined in 1977, Kulananda is an experienced
practitioner of Buddhism and meditation, and he is author of
several books, including Principles of Buddhism,Western
Buddhism, and Mindfulness and Money. He is based in
Cambridge, where he teaches at the local Buddhist centre.
Produced by Nicolas Soames
Recorded by Daryl Chapman at RNIB Talking Book Studios,
London
Edited by Sarah Butcher
Urgyen Sangharakshita
Total time
3:40:03